


The Down and the Rabbits

by Katherine



Category: Watership Down (2018 BBC TV Series), Watership Down - Richard Adams
Genre: Gen, Strawberry is a doe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-31 03:37:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17841725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katherine/pseuds/Katherine
Summary: Strawberry was getting to be a calmer rabbit as she settled among them. The journey to the down had started that.





	The Down and the Rabbits

**Author's Note:**

> Borrowed from the BBC series: Strawberry being a doe with some of how she acted in what was her home warren; Bluebell and Blackberry in the background.

Strawberry was getting to be a calmer rabbit as she settled among them. The journey to the down had started that, keeping them all on the move and (unusually for hrair rabbits in a group) disinclined to straggle.

Each day as Strawberry quieted, the contrast increased with how she had been when they met. She'd been made something near frantic at meeting Hazel's band of rabbits who were unlike the resignedly fearful ones of her home warren. She started less at questions. In general, Hazel could say that the doe took more time, as she was at the moment, speaking slowly while at evening silflay on the Down.

"I think I know part of why." She hesitated, but Hazel tipped his ears encouragingly. It was good, he believed, that Cowslip, Silverweed, and the others of that warren were "they" not "we" to Strawberry now. Hazel himself, and the rest, were not any longer the Sandleford bucks they had been before the journey. All of them were part of a new warren, one yet forming and unnamed.

"Why they didn't tell the old stories," Strawberry continued. "Not only tricks. But in the story there's friends. And of course El-ahrairah and Rabscuttle." She slid a glance towards Bluebell, nestled close to Blackberry, their fur mingling to a matching ticked shade as the evening shadows crept in.

"We came to your warren together," Hazel said, himself considering the idea aloud. What impression they must have made! Almost together, at any rate. Fiver had turned away and there'd been that fierceness from Bigwig, but those tensions among them might have been watched differently. How could Hazel himself understand rabbits whose whole lives were a pretence of content, of families, of safety. How astray from proper rabbit lives, inside a warren that every pawstep outside of meant chancing the deadly wire.

Strawberry was making herself a life here, a truer as well as quieter one. Of course there would be scuffles among the bucks when she was ready to mate, or perhaps serious fights. But that wasn't to her account.

Strawberry hopped forward, her front paws moving with a quickly-stilled nervousness, or perhaps suppressing one of the strange greeting rituals that had been habit before. When she touched Hazel's shoulder it was with one forepaw only, very lightly.

"I'm glad to be here with all of you," Strawberry said then. A little stiffly, but Hazel thought that was from held-in emotion. Strawberry's whole first life was behind her like moonlight after dawn. Not least Nildro-hain, the doe she had shared a burrow with, but mentioned so rarely.

 _I will go with you, I will be rabbit-of-the-wind,_ her warren's poet Silverweed had said.

Strawberry had gone not into the madness that was the "will of Frith", nor into a snare's final tight embrace, but away with other rabbits. She was a rabbit of the down. One of Hazel's rabbits. If they didn't all call him Hazel-rah, nonetheless he felt himself to be their chief rabbit. With tricks and knowing each of their strengths, he would try to keep them safe as they made a warren here.


End file.
